


Dark And Deep

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Fairy AU, M/M, being taken by the fair folk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-19 01:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15499185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: A father and son live just outside of town on the edge of the woods.





	Dark And Deep

Chouji and his father live outside of town in a little house only a few feet from the forest. If they could be said to own anything, it's perhaps an acre or so around the house. They don't often leave the edge of the woods and that’s how the townspeople like it. 

They say that Chouza’s been bewitched. That the Shadow Walkers have whispered in his ear, and someday he’ll go and he won’t come back. 

It's hard to believe a man like Chouza can be bewitched by anything. He chops wood and makes soap. He hunts and fishes and teaches his son how to tell good mushrooms from bad. He sews together their worn-out shirts and always has a story. He is all that is good and warm and Chouji loves him more than life. 

Chouji has watched his father for years, for signs that the townspeople are right. He is seven and has never seen them.

Chouji is ten when he notices how his father stands at the window and looks out at the trees in the gloaming of the day, just before all the dark colors outside bleed to black and the sky seeps from pink to blue.

Chouji is ten when he realizes why. 

Chouza is waiting.

Waiting for his son to grow into a man. Waiting for Chouji to not need him anymore. 

Waiting to disappear.

Chouji knows he should be afraid of the forest. There are things in there that even his father won’t fight, and Chouza is The Biggest. People in town say there’s no way they’re totally human but Chouji isn’t sure what they mean. Big doesn’t mean much when the trees could swallow you whole. 

Chouji knows he should be afraid. 

He isn’t. 

There’s a gentleness to the dark green gloom over the paths. There’s courage to be found in the sound of the nearby river. There’s danger, too, and Chouji has seen it and known it but he is a very polite young man, polite and gentle. 

The human world chews up gentle and spits it out. 

The forest gives it succor. 

Chouza teaches Chouji how to hunt and fish and mend. They make soap together now, tend their garden side by side. Chouji wipes the sweat from his father's brow and builds the fire up high when the night gets cold.

“What did they feel like?” Chouji asks his father as he winds flannel around Chouza's palm, to better cover blisters. He’s turning fourteen soon. 

Chouza gazes into the fireplace. Despite his age his hair is still red, his hands still strong. Chouji loves him more than life. 

“They fit in all the places no one else ever could,” Chouza says. Chouji doesn’t quite understand but he nods anyway. 

“What did they look like?” Chouji asks. He has been given a new hunting knife, the first new thing he has ever owned. He is turning fifteen soon. 

“Black and gold and red and silver,” Chouza tells him. “Like flowers exploding in frost.” 

“What will you need?” Chouji asks when Chouza starts to forget to lock the door. He is turning sixteen soon. 

“I don’t know,” Chouza says and so Chouji packs a little of everything. He knows his father can carry it. 

When he wakes on his sixteenth birthday, Chouji is alone. The fire had been built up the night but now is only embers. The floor has been swept, the last of the chores done. The pack he had so carefully prepared is no longer leaning on the chair by the open door. 

It had been locked when they went to bed. 

Chouji stands to close the door, gazes into the woods. If he squints perhaps- but no. 

The Shadow Walkers have come for his father, and his father has gone. 

Chouji closes the door and makes breakfast. 

Chouji is seventeen when they come for him.

They appear in the yellow wash of springtime dusk, leaning on two fat treetrunks. There are two, a man and a woman. Perhaps they’re his age. It’s hard to tell. The man has eyes narrow as the spaces between tight branches in winter. The woman is so pretty it’s hard to look at her. 

The woman has horns, white and curved. The man has antlers, black and reaching. 

Chouji looks at them, bows because that’s polite. “Would you like to come inside?” He asks. 

They shake their heads. The woman smiles. 

The man reaches out and Chouji almost touches him.

Almost.

He goes inside and closes the door. In the morning they are gone. 

They leave him things, his Shadow Walkers- deer hides, pieces of obsidian polished fine and sharpened to points. On his increasingly rare supply runs the townspeople don’t ask Chouji where his father is anymore. The whispers that died down have come back. 

“You’re next,” an old woman in the square says. Chouji doesn’t deny it. 

Their gifts become a little bolder. Bottles of fine spices and seeds, delicate robes that fit him perfectly, left closer and closer to the door. 

Chouji thinks long and hard before he leaves gifts of his own. A carefully cut wooden comb for her, a piece of cloth dyed the same green as the air beneath the trees for him. They are not as lovely as what he has been given. They are all that Chouji can give. 

It’s going to snow soon and Chouji closes the little house as best he can. He takes his mother’s amber beads, his father’s biggest coat. He leaves the door unlatched. 

It has been a good house. It will be good to someone else. 

Chouji walks into the forest and doesn’t tire or grow hungry. Deeper than he’s ever ventured, then farther than that. 

Chouji comes to a clearing and they are waiting. 

He is wearing his green cloth wrapped around his waist. She is brushing her moonlight hair, and the comb is shiny and smooth from her oils. 

This time, they both offer their hands. 

This time, Chouji takes them. 

“Ours,” the woman whispers into his neck. 

“Ours,” the man murmurs as he nuzzles an antler against Chouji’s shoulders. 

“Yours,” Chouji promises. They take him right there in the soft moss, biting and sighing and feeling every inch of him. He is not too Big. He is just right. 

In the distance, Chouji can hear his father laughing. 

His thumbs run up horns and antlers.

Outside the forest it begins to snow.


End file.
